Penal policy: Grayling's titanic distraction

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/13/penal-policy-chris-grayling-titanic-distraction

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Six years ago, amid official estimates that prison numbers could top 100,000 by 2014, Labour's justice secretary, Jack Straw, commissioned Lord Carter of Coles to review the future needs of the prison system. In late 2007, Lord Carter reported with plans for an enhanced building programme, at the centre of which would be three super-prisons, each containing at least 2,500 prisoners, costing £2.9bn. Mr Straw then launched a consultation on these so-called Titan prisons, which reported in 2009. Opposition to the Titan prisons turned out to be overwhelming – criticisms ranged from uncontrollable cost, safety issues, control problems, difficulty of focusing on rehabilitation, and evidence from abroad that large prisons are ineffective – and they were scrapped even before they were built.

Some of the most vociferous attacks on the Titan idea came from the opposition Conservatives. In 2008, a Tory report, Prisons with a Purpose, declared a preference for "smaller local prisons instead of the 'Titan' prisons proposed by the government". That same year, Nick Herbert, then shadow justice secretary, told the Guardian that "huge prisoner warehouses, the largest in Europe, were not the right answer". And, speaking in 2009, David Cameron said: "The idea that big is beautiful with prisons is wrong." Having visited one of England's largest prisons, the Tory leader said he had been "profoundly depressed by the size and impersonality". Other Conservatives stressed that the crucial rehabilitative function of prisons was "most unlikely to be achieved in enormous Titan prisons".

Last week, however, the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, performed a U-turn. The government, he said, was beginning feasibility work on "what would be Britain's largest prison ... the new prison could hold more than 2,000 prisoners". Mr Grayling did not actually use the name but what looks like a Titan prison and sounds like a Titan prison should be treated like a Titan prison. And Titan prisons are still wasteful and counterproductive. There is no evidence that any of the objections that applied with such force in 2009, about which so many Conservatives from Mr Cameron down were so eloquent so recently, do not still apply with equal force now.

So why is Mr Grayling doing this? To be fair, the justice secretary has not yet signed off on the new prison – and may never do so. This new Titan is not the flagship of a thoughtless building programme, as Labour's 2007 plans were. On the contrary, Mr Grayling's U-turn over Titans comes in the context of a welcome closure announcement for nine prisons, and an overall reduction in prison numbers. Moreover, Mr Grayling has also announced a fresh drive on rehabilitation – controversial in some eyes because of the privatisation he plans – which also deserves recognition for at least addressing a much neglected priority. And his feasibility study may conclude in the end that big is bad, as Mr Straw's did in 2009.

It is possible, in short, that the new Titan is a bit of a rightwing smokescreen. It could all be designed to burnish the justice secretary's tough man image while concealing some of the more progressive things that Mr Grayling is doing in other parts of the penal policy forest. The Titan may be being floated in the knowledge that the Treasury will never stand for it.

At the moment, though, this can only be an over-generous speculation. A combination of public spending pressures and good penal instincts among some ministers have forced and allowed the coalition to embrace alternatives to prison that Labour ran scared of. Prison numbers are falling, unlike in 2007, as is crime. Meanwhile public spending is not coming down as fast as the Treasury wants. So the case for exhuming the Titan prison is worse than ever. It was a distraction six years ago and remains one today – a worse one in some ways, since it involves such a large and uncertain use of public money at a time of scarcity. Super-prisons are a titanic waste under the coalition, just as they were under Labour. Mr Grayling should go no further with the idea.